


Duty of Care

by altschmerzes



Series: Whumptober 2020 [3]
Category: NCIS: Los Angeles
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Early in Canon, Gen, Guilt, Hostage Situations, Hurt/Comfort, Manhandling, Minor Injuries, Protectiveness, Whump, Whumptober 2020, this is set somewhere season 1-3ish, thoughts on how g feels about the ops nerds in early seasons: the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:15:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27021109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altschmerzes/pseuds/altschmerzes
Summary: A case that requires Eric and Nell to leave ops to deal with an on-site closed system network of computers while G and Sam keep an eye on them goes, in a few short minutes, extremely haywire.Sam is doing a perimeter check when Nell needs something from the car. G escorts her out. Eric is only alone inside the building for a few minutes, but a few minutes is all it takes. Watching Eric get knocked around and threatened with a gun is bad enough for G - knowing it's his fault is worse. It's all he can do just to get them both out of it alive.(Written for Whumptober 2020 day 3: forced to their knees)
Relationships: Eric Beale & G Callen
Series: Whumptober 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1964482
Comments: 6
Kudos: 33
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Duty of Care

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dickgrysvn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dickgrysvn/gifts).



> truly it did take me an amazingly short amount of time to get wildly, wildly behind on whumptober huh? well the beauty of knowing you're Like ThisTM is that you can go into it knowing it's probably gonna take you through december.
> 
> anyways! haven't written for ncis la in a very long time and never wrote much about eric at all so i hope the characterization seems halfway decent. for rey, who requested this prompt and scenario with g and eric.

For a while, when he was younger, G Callen had thought he must have been some kind of jinx. No matter what he did or where he went or how hard he tried, everything he touched would go bad, rot through the middle or break somehow. Things that seemed fine when he got there would soon turn into nightmares, as if his mere presence had poisoned them.

It’s been a while since that was any kind of constant thought. He’s mostly grown out of it by now, figuring in hindsight it was largely thanks to teenage angst and - a voice sounding suspiciously like Nate chidingly adds, disapproving of a judgemental characterization of how he’d tried to cope as a kid - severe ongoing trauma. It still comes up now and then, though. 

The most major incident in recent history came at just about the year mark of he and Sam working together, after a case where G had ended up handcuffed to a radiator and Sam refused to leave him behind. Sam was shot for his trouble, and it had turned into an argument. The two of them had it out in the emergency room when G tried to tell him he needed a new parter - that G’s jinx wasn’t going to let Sam out of this partnership alive if he stayed. Not remotely shockingly, knowing Sam as he does now, this hadn’t been a particularly persuasive point to make, and that’s an argument G isn’t particularly sad to look back on and say he lost.

That was years ago, and it’s been mostly smooth sailing since then, at least with regards to this particular hiccup. Until today.

Days like today, G really, really has to wonder if maybe he’d been right back in the beginning. Maybe he is a jinx after all. 

Things start out well enough. It’s a case that comes without a body attached at the genesis, which G always finds optimistic. It’s a chance to put a stop to things before anybody loses their life over it. No matter how big the stakes are, there’s always a chance. It’s about as optimistic as G ever gets. It helps that, in the backseat of Sam’s car, Nell and Eric are chatting a mile a minute, voices overlapping each other into an enthusiastic buzz. 

It’s a rare day that either of their analysts leave ops, but this is one where they can’t help from a distance. The call had come in from a software engineering company that has been working on the development of a specialized program for a Navy contract. A serious security breach had taken place at their main office, and apparently the software involved put the breach at such a level of potential widespread chaos and danger that it got turfed straight to NCIS rather than in-house security, local cops, or anybody else who might normally have been tasked to deal with this sort of thing first. Thanks to the way the company’s programmers work, on a closed system only accessible on-site, the only way to figure out exactly what had been downloaded and how much the intruder had gotten before one of the terminals tripped an alarm was to manually go through a set of scrambled access logs. Which means that now, Nell and Eric get to take a little field trip, and G and Sam get to serve on guard duty while they work.

A little bit into the drive over to the office, Nell and Eric had gotten onto a tangent somehow about the company itself and now they’re bouncing off each other in a feedback loop of geeked out excitement - apparently, the minds behind this place have been developing some pretty groundbreaking stuff. Sentence fragments and industry shorthand fly around in the general direction of the front of the car, most of it absolutely Greek to G. He’s not exactly a luddite when it comes to technology, but he’s fully ready to admit Nell and Eric outpace him by miles.

From the driver’s seat, Sam shoots G a look, a raised eyebrow and a clear question on his face. G answers with a short shake of his head, and Sam obviously agrees, dipping his chin and focusing on the road. The moment-long, wordless conversation has a clear meaning - let them keep going, their earnest giddiness about the software this company has put out is harmless and besides. G would be hard pressed to admit it out loud where they could hear him, but it’s nice to listen to them like this, amped up and passionate, enjoying the thrill of being able to delve into the nitty gritty details of something you’re really,  _ really _ good at.

G has something of a secret when it comes to this. It’s one he would be accused of being a massive pushover for if Deeks and Kensi knew about it - Sam already knows, though he also knows better than to poke at it much - but sometimes, G leads Eric and Nell into this on purpose. 

Sometimes, when it’s late at night and he’s alone at the office, catching up on paperwork or doing something else that’s kept him there past when just about everyone else has gone home, G will make his meandering way up to ops. There are projects every so often that require Eric or Nell or both to be in at odd hours, and when he knows they’re there and no one else is, he’ll sometimes go up and sit nearby and ask questions, the kind designed to set them off down a rabbit hole before they have the chance to ask him what he’s doing up there when he’s got a perfectly good desk downstairs. 

There’s something about it he just enjoys, when they talk about what they’re working on like it’s the coolest and most interesting thing in the world, but it’s not the only reason he does it. When G engages in the type of self-reflection he generally tries to steer clear of, knowing it can lead down a very dark path very fast if he’s not careful, he’ll be the first to admit he can be off-putting. He’s well aware that he can be awkward to try and hold a normal conversation with, stiff and unnatural to get to know, and he wants Eric and Nell to be comfortable around him. So the best way he’s found to try and do this, given his seemingly permanently misshapen ability to make himself fit into place with other people, is to listen to them. To show interest in them and what they have to say.

By the time they arrive at the site itself and settle down to get to work, the chatter has ebbed somewhat. It floats between the two techs, over keyboards as they key through the logs on the computers that had been accessed, peaking every now and then into some new spike of excitement as they ping from topic to vaguely related topic like a game of intellectual leapfrog. G is leaned back against a nearby desk listening to them talk and finding it an enjoyable background noise. There’s not much else for him to do but watch over them while they work, something settled in his chest, a pleasant kind of heavy as he keeps quiet sentry.

Sam has left to do a perimeter sweep around the outside of the building, just to be sure nothing untoward has happened while they’ve been working, when Nell announces that she has to grab something from the car that she’d mistakenly left behind when they’d first arrived. She tries to explain what it is she needs and why she needs it, but when she sees what is assuredly a completely blank look on G’s face, she must realize that she’s so deep in technical jargon at that point that recalibrating to explain it at his level would take more effort than it’s worth, and gives up trying.

The idea of leaving Eric behind in the building alone while he escorts Nell out is not one G is remotely comfortable with. He hesitates obviously enough that Eric himself steps in, waving at the door.

“You don’t know how long Sam is gonna take,” he says, voice completely unphased by the thought of being by himself in this big room of computers. “This is time sensitive, yeah? I know you’re here on babysitting duty, Callen, but I think I’ll be okay in an empty room on my own for the like, what, five minutes it’s gonna take you and Nell to run to the car. I’ve got a phone, this wing is so locked down there’s only one entrance. I’ll be fine.”

He’s right, there is only one entrance to access this part of the building, and it’s directly within eyesight of where they’d parked the car, so with only a little more waffling, G concedes the point and leaves with Nell. There’s only one door. G and Nell will be right by it. It’ll be safe to leave for a few minutes.

That’s not how things shake out.

The sense prickling at the back of G’s neck is one he knows well. The technical term for it, Nate had explained to him once in a meandering conversation he can’t for the life of him recall the context of, is thin-slicing. It describes the science behind gut-feelings and vibes, the sense that you have a very good or very bad feeling about a person or a place, knowing that something is about to go either very right or very wrong. A person can recognize patterns in split second moments between moments, match them to things they know from experience, and it manifests as a sixth sense. But technical terms and scientific explanations are not what G is thinking about in the moment. 

What G thinks about the moment he feels it is instinct, intuition, just  _ knowing _ that something has just gone terribly wrong and he needs to get back inside that building, the one where he’s left Eric alone, right now. Just as G is about to tell Nell to hurry up, the words half-formed in his mouth, he hears an abrupt, sharp sound from back where they’d come from and every instinct, intuition, whatever you wanted to call it that had been quietly humming before  _ screams _ .

“Call Sam,” G orders Nell, already taking off back towards the door. “Wait here until he gets here and do  _ not _ go into that building until I come and get you.” 

Reasonably, G knows he should probably be waiting too. Protocol and training says he should be hanging around out here with Nell until he knows what the situation is and, ideally, has Sam for backup. But he can’t. Waiting around even a moment longer is not even remotely an option because Eric is still in there alone - they left him for a  _ minute, _ he was only left unguarded for a  _ minute _ \- and G needs to get eyes on him right now.

When he finally does round the corner at the end of the hall that seems to have tripled in length from when G used it to exit the building to when he uses it to enter again, a frisson of abject horror shocks down his spine. The scene he’s come back to, what he’s been confronted with and forced to look at now, is so completely at odds with the natural order of the world, his world, that it takes him a lagging second to process that it’s actually happening. That this is real.

The chair Eric had been sitting in when last G saw him now lays several feet away, empty and knocked on its side. There’s an unfamiliar man in the room, standing just about where the chair had been, tall and broad, an ugly sneer ripped across his otherwise unremarkable face. The man with the brutish snarl twisted into thin lips and pale, narrow features is looking dowards, towards the person at his feet, one big hand gripping hard to short blond hair. 

Eric’s head is twisted awkwardly to the side, wrenched over by the man whose fingers have woven through his hair tight enough to get a good hold on it. The intruder has used his leverage to force Eric to the ground, his knees pressed into bland blue-grey carpet that makes a muffled scratching sound every time the young man shifts, trying to find any way to get his neck out of the unnatural angle it’s been yanked into. Eric’s own hands are raised in a futile effort to try and dislodge the hold on his head, prying uselessly at a wrist almost twice as thick around as his own.

This guy is, bluntly put, huge. He looks like a football linebacker or a heavyweight boxer and he definitely looks like he could snap Eric in half and not even break a sweat. G stands frozen for the length of one record scratching, rebooting moment, an instant of reaction time lost to empty, clanging incomprehension.

This just isn’t supposed to have been possible.

No one was supposed to be able to get in. G had been watching the door the whole time, no one was supposed to be able to reach this room in the honest to god  _ three minutes _ they were out of it. This man wasn’t supposed to have been able to evade the people who’d swept the building after the alarm went off, hiding who knows where and remaining inside the whole time, undetected. Above the rest of it rises one fact clean and clear and dismayed, and that is that no one is supposed to put their hands on Eric Beale like this. Nobody bearing any kind of ill intent is supposed to be able to get close enough to touch him. 

Just like that, the moment is over and G’s mind lurches into motion, shifting gears from ‘this isn’t possible’ to ‘well it’s happening so what are you going to  _ do _ about it?’

G has to do something because Eric is on his knees on the ground and that face that had been so happy in the car, had not even an hour ago been broken into a bright grin with a flush of excitement making him look like he’d gotten a light sunburn, is now grimacing in pain, eyes alight with panic, and the whole reason G is even here in the first place was to keep Eric and Nell safe. Sam had gone to sweep the perimeter leaving them behind solely in G’s care and then G had made the unbelievable mistake of stepping out with Nell, and now he’s the reason they’re in this situation at all in the first place. So it’s his job now to get Eric out of it in one piece, or… or he doesn’t know what he’ll do. It doesn’t bear considering. Failing isn’t an option.

“Callen!” Eric is the first one to speak when he blurts it out, obviously having caught sight of G. 

When the man who has Eric by the hair hears this and sees where his captive’s attention is now directed, he turns to look. As he does, the movement of his body pulls Eric’s head with him, sharp enough that it elicits a startled, pained yelp.

“Hey!” The protest punches out of G’s throat and he’s already going for his gun when the man’s voice rings out back at him.

“Don’t even think about it,” he says, loud and aggressive, and he twists to the side, yanking Eric with him and nearly sending him sprawling to the floor. Only a quick off-balance shuffle sideways on his knees keeping him remotely upright. Eric makes another noise as he’s pulled around for a second time, though he manages to mostly stifle it, a muted whine in the back of his throat. G can see even from where he stands that Eric is breathing hard, chest rising and falling in rapid pants.

It’s a facet of companies everywhere, whether they’re in the business of life insurance or computer programming, that the lighting is almost universally terrible. Glaring strips of halogen set into the ceiling look just like every other office building G has ever been in, and it’s an odd thing to have noticed right now, but it’s setting G’s teeth on edge and throwing a horrible cast over every part of this entire awful situation. It’s another thing that just feels  _ wrong _ \- G is so used to seeing Eric in ops, where the world exists in shadow and shades of blue and green, a computer monitor glinting off the lenses of his glasses.

Now the light washes Eric’s skin out into a sickly pallor made worse by how ashen the stress makes him look and there’s a livid bruise building on the side of his face, blooming out from the corner of his mouth where a small stain of blood clings. The only other visible injury is a strange abrasion on his forehead near his temple, which G realizes with a jolt likely came from the carpet. The events of the last few minutes reconstruct themselves in his brain without permission, playing out like a court simulation of a crime. 

Eric, jerked out of the chair and thrown to the floor. 

The chair crashing to the side, wheels spinning in the air with no traction to grab onto, probably the sound G had heard from outside. 

Eric’s head slamming into the carpet so hard the coarse fibers scraped his skin. 

“Now what’s going to happen next,” the unknown man, presumably the one responsible for the security breach that brought them here in the first place, says to G, “is you’re going to reach for your gun - slowly. Take it off, kick it across the room. Now.”

Wordlessly, G does as he’s told. The alternative is a bullet punched through Eric’s skull, tearing a path of destruction through his brilliant brain, and that’s not even almost an option. The sound the gun makes skidding across the carpet echoes in G’s ears like an accusation. Like a guilty verdict.

“Good,” the guy says. “And now you’re going to step aside and let me past, this kid and I are gonna leave, and you’re not gonna follow us.”

G’s eyes flick away from the barrel of the gun that’s been holding his focus hostage as surely as it does Eric, looking right at his kneeling young friend’s face. Eric’s expression doesn’t even twitch out of the twisted up look of panic and pain it’s been in since G first laid eyes on him, and somehow that’s just as bad as the blood on his lip, the abrasion on his forehead. Because there’s a way this is supposed to go, an automatic cascade effect that follows that particular word when applied to this particular person. G can see it now in mundane, dime a dozen memories, an eye-roll and ‘I’m twenty-seven’, Eric’s reaction to any time someone has referred to him in any way as a kid. Not this time, though. This time it doesn’t even seem to have registered.

It’s pretty clear that this situation has Eric so completely freaked out he’s not even processing most of what’s going on around him by now. So it’s up to G to get him out of this. G is the one who left in the first place, it’s his fault they’re here now at all, and he’s the trained field agent who’s been in countless situations like this one in the past. He’s the one with the skills to handle this and the experience and training to keep his brain from whiting out with trauma-induced shock and terror in the process. 

So G looks at Eric, whose frantic blue eyes are locked back on G like he’s the keeper of all the answers, and tries to convey with his own look that things would be okay. They  _ would _ be okay, because G would make  _ sure _ they would be, and G Callen is nothing if he is not stubborn and persistent when he puts his mind to something.

Mind spinning a hundred miles an hour as he flashes through the next several steps like he’s planning out the next gambit of a chess game, G says, “Okay, hang on here.” He holds his hands up in the air, palms out and fingers splayed, a placating move. They don’t shake - he’s too well trained for that by now - but G can feel his heart thudding in his chest. It’s accompanied by a slight ache in his lungs as he forces them to breathe normally, to not betray the very real fear he feels at the sight of one of the two members of his team he can almost always count on being able to categorize as safe being held hostage. “Hang on just a moment.”

“I don’t think you’re exactly in a position to be making any requests there, pal,” the man sneers at G in response, shaking Eric to punctuate his point and almost knocking him over again in the process.

“Maybe not, but I can make a suggestion.” G has to think quickly, he knows, because his options are limited and he can’t count on Eric for any help. Eric isn’t trained for this, he doesn’t have the experience, and it isn’t his job to know what to do when he’s been knocked around and forced to his knees in order to get out of it alive. Thankfully, G does, and he launches into it without wasting another moment. “You don’t want  _ him,” _ he says, gesturing to Eric without looking at him directly, forcing down the nausea that rises at doing so. “He’s a tech. He’s the geek squad, not a bargaining chip. Me? I’m leverage. I’m your bargaining chip. I’m worth way more in a negotiation.” 

They aren’t fun things to say, claims to make about a friend right in front of him. But G would be more worried about him taking those words the wrong way if it weren’t for the fact that, when he risks glancing quickly down at the young man’s face, Eric looks like he isn’t processing enough to take anything personally at the moment. Not to mention the value of saving Eric’s life vastly outweighs avoiding potentially hurting his feelings.

Their hostage taker of the day looks at G, his expression wavering between angry and anxious. His eyes dart around the room, jumping from G to the exit and back to G again. The entire time, his grip flexes in Eric’s hair, though in all his flickering attention the man doesn’t actually look down at him once. Eric makes a small sound in the back of his throat, involuntary and distressed, and G feels his heart thud harder at hearing it.

“I disagree,” is what the man eventually tells G, making his thudding heart swoop, deep and dizzying. “See, what I need isn’t a bargaining chip. I’m not negotiating. I’m just leaving, and you’re just going to let me, and for that? He’s my perfect leverage. You wanna know how I know?”

Something about the new glint that’s lit up in the man’s eyes is beyond unnerving, making the whole precarious situation feel just that much more on the verge of exploding. G raises his hands a little further, emphasizing their universal, wordless message of placating surrender. “Hey, just take it easy.”

The man ignores him completely and continues, saying, “Because you look pretty calm right now, all things considered, and he, well. He’s scared shitless, huh? Not you, though. You’re cool as a cucumber. But watch what happens when I do this.”

Faster than this distracted, amped up man seems like he should be able to, he’s suddenly moving. His hand flashes out and yanks Eric’s head with it, throwing him off balance and then cracking him across the mouth with the barrel of the gun. The blow sends Eric straight to the ground, and G only catches sight of the impression in dust on the side of Eric’s shirt, the one that had previously been hidden in the shadow and crease of fabric, in the split second before the man’s boot lashes out to land a solid kick overlapping the first print with a second.

Eric yells and it almost drowns out G’s own aborted shout. G makes a move towards his gun, laying feet away on the ground, but stops when the man cocks the hammer of the weapon that had just been used to split his hostage’s lip, pointing it down at where Eric now lays curled on his side. His arms are lifted to shield his head and it makes him look small and hurt. The sight of his body crumpled there feels like an indictment. A screaming charge against G,  _ look at what you did, you let this happen, how far are you planning on letting it go? _

“See,” the man says with a kind of near-crazed calm. He leans down, keeping the barrel of the gun trained straight on Eric while reaching out with his other hand. It’s short work for him to push past Eric’s disoriented attempts to fend him off and once again snarl his fingers into a fistful of short blond hair. “That right there is my proof that he’s all the leverage I need. So now, if you don’t mind, you’re going to get out of my way, and we’re going to leave. If I’m in a nice mood, I’ll leave him on the sidewalk somewhere.” He talks about Eric like he isn’t even there, doesn’t look at him though the gun stays pointed true, looks at G instead. Making it clear who he thinks is worth his limited time, running quickly out as it is. “If I’m not in a nice mood… Well, I’ll let you use your imagination. Now are you going to let me leave in a good mood, or do you feel like gambling today?”

There is one thought spinning around in G’s brain that’s keeping him remotely focused and not just about this close to freaking out entirely, and it’s that Sam will be here any moment. Though it feels for all the world as though time has grown elastic in the confines of this room, long and stretched out, he knows everything that has happened here has happened in a very short window of a few small minutes. Any moment now, Sam will have come back around the building after finishing his perimeter check, found Nell where G left her at the car, and he’ll come racing in here just in time to turn the tide and get everyone out of this in one piece. All G has to do until then is distract this guy, keep him from leaving or from doing anything more to Eric for long enough that Sam can arrive.

When he looks at Eric, G tries to put it into his face that there’s a plan. He tries to communicate with as much reassurance as he can without speaking that they’re going to get out of this, and all Eric has to do is hang on until Sam gets here. Just until Sam gets here, and then everything is going to turn out okay.

“Come on,” G says, “you don’t want to do this.” It’s a risk to keep pushing the matter, braving the hazard that it could frustrate the already volatile man further on the off chance that arguing about which of them makes the better hostage given the circumstances might stall him just long enough.

“We literally  _ just _ went over this.” It’s obvious he is definitely becoming more frustrated by the moment, clearly aware of the mounting danger every moment longer he spends in this room and not running as far away as he can get. His voice has raised, like G’s persistence has found his volume switch and ticked it up by a few points. “I’m taking blondie and we’re leaving, so get the hell out of my way.”

“I can’t let you do that.” Adrenaline sparks behind G’s eyes and in the tips of his fingers. There’s a fine line between pushing just far enough and pushing just too far. 

“You really don’t have a choice, you moron, get out of my way!” It might be working, fortune favoring G’s efforts for once in his life, because though the man’s grip on Eric is as tight as ever, he’s still looking right at G. He hasn’t even shot a look down at Eric in a good minute now, his attention already split between G and the door. He’s irritated but not so irritated that his finger is flexing on the trigger.

All G has to do is drag this out a little longer. Just a little bit longer and it would all turn out okay.

_ Come on, Sam, _ G thinks.  _ Please. You’ve never let me down yet, please don’t make today the first. _

The entire time he spends trying to negotiate with this live wire, not so much because he thinks there’s any real chance it’s going to work but because every second G spends keeping him here is another second for Sam to be figuring out a plan of entry, he is acutely aware of the third person with them in this room. It doesn’t escape his attention for a moment that Eric is caught between them, both figuratively and physically, completely subject to the whims of however this interaction between them may go. Eric’s life is literally in this big angry stranger’s violent hands and metaphorically in G’s barely steady ones, and one twist of either of them is going to spell the end for him. 

G knows Sam is about to enter a moment before it happens, just like outside by the car when he’d known even before he heard the sound from the building that something had gone wrong. Instinct, thin-slicing, whatever the right word for it is, G knows, and that split-second of a headstart on Eric’s captor is all it takes for him to come up with a plan. Sam’s sudden, loud call for attention distracts the man and his focus flicks up the hall to where Sam has made his abrupt entrance, his grip loosening on Eric just enough that he slips forward and puts a few precious inches of space between them. It’s not much, but it’s enough, and it’s all it takes for G to finally get the upper hand.

In one fluid surge forward, G grabs both the man’s gun hand and the wrist of the hand that’s still tangled in Eric’s hair, and with a twist of one and a neat application of force to pressure points in the other, it’s done. G manages to get him to release both with a yelp of surprise and pain, the gun thudding to the floor and Eric lurching out of reach the moment he’s able to. The takedown is swift and almost too easy, though G doesn’t spare much thought towards what happens with the man and his apprehension once he’s sent stumbling away in Sam’s direction. Sam has it handled, he figures, and besides, there’s something far more important that’s still snared most of G’s attention right now.

It doesn’t take much looking to find Eric.

When G turns around and performs a quick scan of the room, his searching gaze almost immediately alight on a figure that’s come to rest only a few feet away. Eric is collapsed on the ground next to a desk, breathing so hard it’s audible as soon as G gets two steps closer, and his hands are shaking where they’re propped between his knees. He looks up at G when he notices someone approaching with a sharp jerk of his head and an even sharper inhale. His blue eyes are too wide and too bright, mouth pressed into a thin, blanched line, staring up at G like he might start to cry or something, and G has absolutely no idea what to do.

When G drops to a kneel next to Eric, it looks like the tech is going to try and say something but doesn’t manage it. G doesn’t know what to say either, so he doesn’t even try. Instead he just reaches out, gently laying his hand on the back of Eric’s neck. Eric jolts a little the moment he’s touched, and it feels like he’s made a mistake, except that ultimately the jolt tilts Eric to the side towards the person crouched next to him, head listing sideways until it rests against G’s chest. The edge of a pair of rectangular glasses frames pokes into G’s shirt in one hard, sharp little point, just this side of painful. 

As more of Eric’s weight comes to lean against him, G holds still and tries not to shift too much. A sudden surge of protectiveness rises up and nearly chokes him, his body forming a barrier between Eric and the chaos that is swelling in the room behind him as Deeks and Kensi arrive, backup surely called by Nell after G left her by the car. He can hear Sam’s voice somewhere back there too, a calm command maintaining order amongst a disjointed mess. Listening to it, G knows without needing to verify it that Sam is keeping everyone back, letting Eric have the space he needs to come down off the immediate adrenaline shock of what’s happened to him today.

For what feels like a long time but probably wasn’t much more than a minute in reality, Eric sits collapsed over against the supporting presence at his side and G stays put, palm steady on the back of his neck and thumb barely brushing his hairline. Eventually, Eric sits up and shudders, like he’s shaking himself to rights again. He wipes a sleeve absentmindedly across his mouth then cringes and looks down. His eyes are wide and shocked, a cherry smear now standing out against the grey of his sweater. There’s blood wiped across the side of his face now too, like someone has carelessly flicked a paintbrush over his skin, stemming from where he’d been pistol whipped and fanning out over his cheek.

“Ow,” Eric says flatly, staring at the bloodied sleeve like he can’t quite process what he’s seeing. Maybe he can’t. Shock will do that to you.

“There’s a couple paramedics here,” G tells him. He’d seen them when he’d looked over his shoulder, a pair of navy-blue clad LAFD personnel hovering over where Sam had been keeping them back. “Why don’t we go outside and they can check you out and make sure everything’s okay. Sound good?”

Eric nods numbly and stands when G does, accepting the offered help to pull him careful to his feet. G keeps close next to him as they navigate the room, dipping his chin in acknowledgement of Kensi and Deeks when they make eye contact with him over the top of Eric’s bowed head. When they pass him, Sam reaches out at the same time G does, fingers brushing each other’s forearms in a split second that says everything they need to.

Nell is still by the car. When she sees them and stands she does so with a hesitation so loud G can hear it, waiting for any signal that it’s okay to approach. Her hands wring absentmindedly together in front of her, a nervous tic G doesn’t know if she’s noticed she falls into when she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do.

At a little nod from Eric, G gives Nell a little nod of his own, and she rushes over fast but with a fluttering touch like she’s scared she’s going to break him. G doesn’t blame her, given Eric looks… bad. It probably wouldn’t look quite as bad if it were G himself, probably, or Sam or Deeks or Kensi. It’s not that he’s  _ okay _ with looking at them and seeing split lips, a boot print in dust outlined on their torsos, but it’s at least something he’s had a minute to get his head around, as he’d imagine they’ve had time to come to terms with regarding him as well. Eric, though, there’s no framework for understanding the blooming bruising on his face, the tiny speckle of his own blood on one lense of his glasses. 

Nell can’t seem to understand it either and quickly gives up trying, standing on her toes to reach up high enough to get her arms over his shoulders, hugging him gently but tightly at the same time. Eric slumps down into the hug like he’s exhausted, and G doesn’t blame him. Stress and fear for your life can have that effect. 

There are a few words exchanged between the two of them that G can’t make out and doesn’t strain himself trying to, figuring it’s none of his business. He stands nearby and watches over the two analysts, keeping his distance and standing sentry between them and the building. The man who’d attacked Eric is no longer inside but it still feels somehow important that there’s some kind of barrier between them and where all that careless violence had taken place. Watching over them, G can see that they’re shaking. It’s not clear which one of them is the source of the trembling permeating both of them in their near-desperate little tangle. Maybe it’s both.

Eventually, with an audible, shoulder-heaving breath, Nell releases Eric and steps back, scrubbing her cardigan sleeve-covered hands over her face and clearing her throat. They both seem more shored up now than a minute ago, feet planted on more solid ground.

Stepping over closer to them now that he’s given them their moment, G shepherds Eric further away from the building, Nell tagging along with them. One hand ghosts behind Eric’s back, guiding him. It’s maybe unnecessary but it makes him feel better to do so anyway. His other hand rests on Nell’s shoulder in a protective grip, wanting her as far away as possible from those horrible halogen lights and that coarse, abrasive carpet too. 

G watches the paramedics instruct Eric to sit down on the tailgate of the rig they’d driven there, talking to him with the practiced, bland calm of professionals dealing with what is far from the most intense case they’ve ever been called out on, at least in terms of the damage to the victim. The man and the woman in the neat-pressed uniforms put Eric through an exam to assess the exact extent of the damage done, and whether the injuries necessitate a trip to the hospital. Nell stands beside them and hovers with a stony look on her face and a stubborn set to her jaw, far enough back to be out of the paramedics’ way as they work on her friend but close enough that she’s just barely out of reach. From the way the two LAFD medical personnel glance at each other and to her, a silent conversation passing between them the likes of which G has had with Sam a hundred times over, then proceed to allow her to stay there without questioning or telling her to step back, they’ve experienced this type of guarding hovering before.

It doesn’t take long for the conclusion to be reached that there’s no urgent need for Eric to make a visit to the hospital, and since he doesn’t seem remotely keen on the idea, this means the hospital is off the agenda today. (G can’t say he’s sad about that. He’s never been a fan of hospitals himself for a host of what he thinks are fairly self-evident reasons, and he knows that if Eric had ended up going there’s no way he would’ve  _ not _ been there every step of the way. He’s already abandoned Eric once today, he’s not about to do it again.) 

The worst of the damage, which is reported to G and Nell along with Eric when he tells them he’s fine with them saying whatever they need to in the presence of company, pretty much all amounts to superficial injuries. There’s deep bruising, especially over his ribs where he’d been kicked, and a few steri-strips seal the cut in his lip from the pistol whip he’d taken across the face, but they weren’t concerned anything might be broken and he won’t need any stitches. A couple tablets of aspirin and a recommendation to apply ice and heat at home and take it easy, and he was in the clear to leave without further medical attention. All in all, the news is as good as it was going to be. Eric thanks them with the kind of sheepish gratitude involved in not being used to being the center of attention, and so does Nell, much more profusely and directly. G nods to them in turn, passing on his own kind of thanks.

When Sam comes over and asks what the verdict is, Eric gives him a half-hearted smile. “Well,” he says, hands tucked into the pockets, “I should be good as new, just a fancy new aversion to leaving ops for any reason literally ever again.”

“Can’t say I blame you,” Sam tells him, gently clapping his shoulder then turning to Nell. They need her help inside, something to do with a few last details about the case that brought them there in the first place. Most of the point is moot given the capture of their bad guy, but there’s still a few loose ends they need keyboard-savvy hands to tie up.

Despite nodding and telling Sam she’d be there in a moment, Nell doesn’t take a single step towards the building until Eric indicates he’s going to be fine here without her. When the nod comes, she disappears back into the building following Sam, leaving Eric and G outside alone. 

The paramedics have packed up to head back to their station and the parking lot outside the building seems eerie in its empty quiet, so different from the tumult that had taken over inside that the contrast makes it feel that much more deserted. Eric has moved to the backseat of the car they’d all arrived in, sitting sideways with the door hanging open. G had made the point after they’d been left on their own that he could take Eric home, Sam and Nell could easily catch a ride back with Kensi and Deeks, but he’d declined the offer. So now the two of them are left out here waiting in an odd limbo, the mild, early spring day feeling colder than it probably should with a faint breeze swirling around G’s legs. He doesn’t make a move to escape the wind, though, standing beside the car’s open door because he doesn’t want to lose sight of Eric and doesn’t know where else he’d go anyway. 

For several minutes there’s a silence between them that’s neither comfortable nor particularly awkward, hovering rather in some kind of stasis like they’re both waiting for something to happen. Eventually, Eric breaks it, shifting where he sits sideways on the seat and squinting up at G.

“Okay, what is it?”

Shrugging uncomfortably, G looks around. Nothing is new, nothing is different, just the two of them here in the lot. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Eric elaborates, “you’re thinking so loud it’s making my head hurt, and I’ve already got a pretty good headache.” The sentence is punctuated by a thin, almost hysterical laugh that conveys absolutely no belief that anything about this is actually at all funny. G’s stomach aches at the sound. “So, if you could maybe do me a solid and spit it out before the super strength aspirin those really nice paramedics gave me decides to start wearing off…”

Despite the shock and trauma he’s been through, the hand absent-mindedly curled around his own side, guarding where he’d taken the brunt of the impact from being kicked, Eric’s eyes are focused and shrewd. He doesn’t back down, even when G hesitates for a long pause. It’s easy to lose track sometimes, thanks to the way he dresses like a college kid on spring break and spends more time with computer screens than he does with people, but Eric can be shockingly perceptive sometimes. G knows this, but he’d lost sight of it, and he shakes his head at the thought. Because Eric is right. He is thinking about something, and pretty hard at that.

When G forces himself to say it, it comes out of his mouth stiff and slow like he’d just learned the language and still wasn’t quite sure how to put the words together quite right. “I’m sorry,” he says, uneasy restlessness buzzing in his fingertips down his calves. “I shouldn’t have left the building while Sam was gone too, and you never should’ve been there on you own. You’re not a field agent. I made a bad call, and you paid for it.”

As soon as he’d started talking G had looked away, his usual moderate discomfort with more than incidental eye contact heighted by what he’d had to say, but he glances back when it’s out, needing to get a read on how it was hitting Eric to hear it. There’s an odd expression on Eric’s face, and expression reading skill G’s worked for decades on teaching himself is failing him right now, because he can’t make sense of this one at all. Maybe it’s just that it really is that hard to comprehend, or maybe it’s the steri-strips slightly pinked with blood from the split in Eric’s lip, the purpling bruise on his cheek, but the slight, thoughtful frown doesn’t make any sense to G at all. And it makes even less sense in light of the words that follow it.

“Thank you.”

That’s not anything G could’ve predicted Eric was about to say, because it just doesn’t make any reasonable sense. Responding to an apology with a thank you is weird, even for their already somewhat odd analyst, and that’s without even bringing in the specific context of this one. What G had been apologizing for. The consequences of that mistake to the person who’s now thanking him for… Something.

“For what?” G asks, thinking  _ I didn’t do anything.  _ He didn’t do anything he should’ve done, that’s the issue. It’s his fault it happened in the first place.

“You stayed calm,” says Eric with a serious tone implying that’s anything special, anything to thank him for. “You kept your head on straight and stayed focused and the second there was an opportunity, you took it. I- When that guy first showed up, I thought he was going to shoot me on the spot and that was going to be the end of it.” The hand Eric doesn’t have pressed to his side, sitting loose in his lap, is trembling slightly and he looks a little distant now. His face is ashen and troubled before he takes one small, sharp breath and seems to refocus on where they actually are. “And then you came back in, and even though he still had a gun to my head, it felt like I had a chance. That things were going to turn out okay, because you were going to do everything you could to make sure they did.”

Unable to bear the weight of what Eric is saying, the heady gratitude and awe in his voice, G is looking away again. There’s nothing heavier than credit you don’t deserve and faith you didn’t earn, G thinks, and tries to shuck it off, chin drifting from side to side in a slow shake as he speaks. “It’s my job. Y’know. Nothing special when it’s the sort of thing you deal with every day.”

The brush-off doesn’t work. Eric doesn’t let it.

“It’s not every day for me, though,” he says. “That’s  _ your _ every day. Not mine. So for me, that was…” The words fade off into nothing, a world of algorithms and strings of code nowhere near preparing Eric to talk about what just happened to him. 

He may look at the photos, observe via video, hear day in and day out about this kind of violence and much worse, but it would be infinitely naive to assume that was anything like standing in the middle of it, and even that doesn’t prepare you for the first time it is inflicted on your own body. Eric doesn’t have the words, not yet at least. And G can’t give them to him. The words for this have to come from him or they won’t be right. They won’t help.

“That was horrible,” Eric finishes. The hand that had been laid in his lap comes up to wrap around his other side, both arms folded across his torso in an unconscious self-protective movement. “It was  _ horrible, _ and I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t even  _ think. _ But I didn’t end up needing to. Because you were there to keep it from getting worse. So thank you.”

The instinct to deflect rises again but this time G chokes it down. He can’t shove off the thanks a second time, not with that explanation behind it. To do so would minimize everything Eric just said, and G won’t do that to him. So instead he nods, his silence a compromise between an absolution he can’t quite manage to grant himself by accepting the gratitude outright and a self-deprecating urge to argue that will do neither of them any favors. 

“Hey,” Eric says suddenly after a few minutes pass where the only sounds between them are the noise of distant traffic and the occasional faint echo of a door closing or indistinct voice calling to someone else back in the building. “Don’t they need you in there or something? To do… I don’t know, something that’s not standing out here in a parking lot?”

“Nope,” G answers easily. That part he doesn’t have to think about at all. “I’m right where I need to be.”


End file.
